Accord on Ground-Water Cleanup Is Elusive : Torrance: State regulators say Mobil, Honda and the city Redevelopment Agency should share cleanup costs. But so far only Mobil is willing.

After years of effort, Torrance’s latest redevelopment project has become the corporate showpiece it was intended to be. American Honda’s glassy new headquarters presides over a lush landscape of verdant turf and newly planted trees.

Underground, though, there’s an ugly problem. And who will pay to resolve it remains in doubt.

Contamination beneath the site, at Torrance Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, forms part of a mile-long stretch of ground-water pollution extending north to Mobil Oil’s Torrance refinery. The pollution, it is estimated, could take three decades and anywhere from $30 million to $200 million to clean up.

But the three parties that state regulators say should pay for the work--Mobil, Honda and the city Redevelopment Agency--have failed in recent weeks to agree on a cost-sharing plan.

Mobil, which has acknowledged that it caused some of the pollution, already is treating some of the tainted water. But Honda and Torrance officials contend that they have no obligation to pitch in, despite assertions by regulators that they should do so because the former occupants of the redevelopment site were partially responsible for the contamination.

That leaves a question mark looming over one of the South Bay’s largest ground-water cleanup efforts. Citing the dangers posed by the pollution, state water quality officials say that if a cost-sharing agreement isn’t reached soon, they may consider ordering Honda and Torrance to ante up.

“The pollution is in unused aquifers near the surface, but there’s a concern the material might leak down into the deeper, potable aquifers” from which several South Bay communities draw their drinking water, said Robert Ghirelli, executive officer of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. “We want to move as quickly as we can.”

Though most of the South Bay’s drinking water is piped into the region, an estimated 25% is pumped from the area’s underground aquifers. That heightens worries about pollution of the type that stretches from the Mobil refinery to the redevelopment site.

Most of that pollution is dissolved gasoline that has seeped south from the Mobil refinery, state water quality officials say. In 1989, Mobil agreed to undertake an effort supervised by the Water Quality Control Board to clean up the tainted water. It has installed underground barrier wells at its refinery to prevent more pollutants from moving south and is using recovery wells and a treatment system to begin cleansing the aquifers.

But state regulators also attribute some of the pollution to chemical contamination from businesses once located on the land now occupied by Honda. Since those businesses have long since left, the officials say, either Honda, Torrance or both should help foot the cleanup bill.

“It’s our belief that Mobil should physically do the cleanup work and (Honda and Torrance) would just pay for their share,” said Jim Ross, a senior engineer with the Water Quality Control Board who is overseeing the cleanup efforts.

Mobil agrees. Said Jim Britt, environmental manager at the company’s Torrance refinery: “It’s clearly evident that (Honda and Mobil) need to participate. . . . There are clearly local (pollution) sources on the Honda property that are contributing to this problem.”

Honda and Torrance officials don’t see it that way.

Joseph Armao, an attorney representing Honda, says consultants hired by the car manufacturer have found no evidence that pollutants from the redevelopment land have contributed to the ground-water contamination.

“Based on the technical data, the answer is, no, we wouldn’t expect to be involved in this cleanup effort at all,” Armao said.

Torrance, meanwhile, has sought to distance itself from the cleanup question by saying it’s a matter for Honda and Mobil to decide. Said City Atty. Kenneth Nelson: “Basically, we don’t care how you divvy it up. Just leave the Redevelopment Agency out of it.”

The dispute about cleanup costs emerged in two meetings held on the ground-water issue late last month involving Mobil, Honda and the Torrance Redevelopment Agency, participants say. And water quality control officials failed to resolve those differences in separate meetings with the three parties during the past two weeks, Ghirelli said.

Ghirelli said he has asked Mobil, Honda and the Redevelopment Agency to “try one more time” to work out a joint cleanup plan. If there is no progress within a month, he said, his agency will have to consider ordering Honda and the Redevelopment Agency to participate in the cleanup.

The alternative--ordering Mobil to perform and pay for the entire cleanup--would also have to be considered, Ghirelli said. But that move, he added, would surely draw a challenge from Mobil, and possibly cause time-consuming delays in the project.

“I suspect what Mobil might do is turn around and appeal any decision like that, and then we would have to defend our position,” Ghirelli said. “We’d rather not get hung up like that.”